The White House Correspondents' Association held a rescheduled White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria on Friday, July 24, and President Donald Trump attended and delivered a rambling, hour-long speech that praised some journalists, took potshots at others, made jokes about public figures' weight and intellect, and quipped about a potential third presidential term.
The event was moved nearly three months after the April 25 dinner at the Washington Hilton was cut short when a suspected gunman rushed a security checkpoint and exchanged fire with officers; about 2,600 people were at the original event, and some heard loud popping sounds outside the ballroom. Prosecutors say the suspect was Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, who they say opened fire inside the Washington Hilton; Allen pleaded not guilty in May to charges including attempting to assassinate the president, transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony, discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence and assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon, and prosecutors allege he had written a note to family members saying he was targeting administration officials.
The rescheduled dinner took place at the Waldorf Astoria on Pennsylvania Avenue, which was formerly the Trump International Hotel, in the venue's roughly 700-person event space, a drastically scaled-down gathering compared with the Washington Hilton. Security at the rescheduled event was markedly tighter: guests entered through a single entrance, passed two ID checks and a detection dog, and moved past armed officers and security guards; there was no red carpet and no separate cocktail receptions preceding the dinner, and there was greater visibility of armed security personnel throughout the evening.
Two additional awards were presented during the rescheduled dinner, and Trump repeatedly smiled and applauded as honors were bestowed. Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service officer who was struck in his protective vest while staffing a security checkpoint in April, received an honor, and the staff of the Washington Hilton were recognized for their response and for preserving and donating unserved meals. The Katharine Graham award for courage and accountability went to a Wall Street Journal team that reported on the president's past relationship with Jeffrey Epstein; veteran anchor Wolf Blitzer announced the prize, and Trump shook hands with members of the reporting team, including a journalist whose home address was previously disclosed in a $20 billion suit the president filed against the paper and whose family was forced to move.
White House Correspondents' Association president Weijia Jiang said the restaged dinner would be "more intimate" and framed the evening around "celebrating the First Amendment," urging that if the media faces government pressure or censorship, "it’s the people who end up knowing less."
Trump opened by invoking the April attack and at one point said, "Tonight we come back together to answer that heinous attack with unwavering resolve," while elsewhere joking that he had built the hotel for "$2.9bn less than the Federal Reserve Building," a line delivered amid broader praise for the founding fathers and for journalistic bravery. He also said, "I hope you all know that I believe in the free press more than anyone in this room," even as his administration has at times sought subpoenas for New York Times reporters and their relatives over reporting about a Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet.
His remarks moved quickly into insults and taunts. He called Sen. Adam Schiff "watermelon head," launched a tiresome and at times bigoted attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar, and quipped about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his supporters with a joke about a suggestion to serve raccoon roadkill as an appetizer. Much of the room grew quiet or looked away during stretches of the speech, and the remarks drew mostly stunned silence.
By the time the house sound system blared YMCA, Trump had been talking for about 65 minutes; the event also included awards presentations and entertainment, and the program ended with Trump donning a red cap that said "Trump 2028" and delivering what he called the "scoop" that he was running again.
It was his first time addressing the WHCA crowd as president.